Slain hotel clerk feared estranged boyfriend would kill her

For more than two years, Michelet Polynice told Carlene Pierre that he would kill her someday.

On Thursday, he did.

Polynice fatally shot Pierre and a co-worker at a hotel near International Drive, then drove to a nearby resort and shot Pierre's best friend. After leading Orange County deputies on a pursuit through Pine Hills, Polynice committed suicide.

Pierre, a 28-year-old hotel employee, told authorities two weeks ago her estranged boyfriend — a man with a long history of violence against several women — choked, punched and threatened to kill her. She was afraid he wouldn't stop until she was dead.

"He is very jealous, very controlling, he has a temper, anything will set him off and he will start hitting me," Pierre wrote in a Sept. 12 petition for a domestic-violence injunction against 33-year-old Polynice, who a day before ran her over in the hotel parking lot. "I am very afraid for my life."

An Osceola County circuit judge granted the request, and on Wednesday night, Orange deputies served Polynice with an injunction that ordered him to stay away from his ex-girlfriend.

A witness told the Orlando Sentinel that the shooter walked into the hotel while guests were eating breakfast, waved a gun around and fired one shot into the air. He then opened fire on the two women, who were at the front desk.

From there, Polynice drove several miles to Westgate Lakes Resort and Spa, where he shot Pierre's friend, 31-year-old Jean Guerline. The housekeeper was on her way into work when she was confronted by Polynice. Authorities say the woman is expected to survive.

Multiple victims

Thursday's deadly incident was preceded by years of alleged violence involving Polynice and several women in Orange and Osceola counties.

Since 2001, Polynice has been charged with several crimes — including aggravated stalking, battery and violating a domestic-violence injunction. Polynice was involved in domestic cases involving two other women in 2003 and 2006. Those records were not available Thursday.

In 2010, an Orange woman told court officials Polynice spat in her face and threatened to kill her while she was at the hospital after giving birth to his child.

The woman, who also was seeking an injunction, claimed Polynice told her that police wouldn't find out because they would think she had complications from giving birth.

Polynice married Miola Aurel in Haiti in 2001, but the couple separated in 2006 and divorced last year. When reached by phone Thursday, Aurel was shocked to learn of her ex-husband's death.

"He was a bad guy, but I don't want anything bad to happen to him," Aurel said, adding that she had not spoken to him in a year.

Pierre was studying nursing at Keiser University in Orlando, her sister, Judith Belchere, told the Orlando Sentinel. Pierre worked during the day at the hotel and went to school at night. She was trying hard to better her life, family members said.

Carlene Pierre was one of four children in a close-knit Haitian family, and her parents said they would attempt to get custody of her daughters, ages 8, 6 and 2.

Pierre's relatives described Polynice as a violent man — not just with the women in his life, but with strangers. Her brother-in-law, Frenelle Belchere, said Polynice got drunk at a birthday party, punched a woman he didn't know and threatened to kill her.

Marlene Pierre said she was terrified that Polynice would kill her daughter. On Thursday night at the family home in Poinciana, she told a reporter she wished Polynice had lived — so he could face trial for murder.

Her father, Deguerre Pierre, 67, said he and his daughter ate breakfast together every morning before going to work.

When he heard the news, "the sky fell on me," the grieving father said. "She got only 28¿years. Why her? Why like this?"

Years of terror

At least five women in Orange and Osceola counties have requested the courts' protection from Polynice during the past decade. In most cases, the Orlando Sentinel found, injunctions were granted. And many times, court records show, the injunctions were violated.

In 2004, he was sentenced to prison for aggravated stalking and felony battery and served nine months. It's not clear whom the victim was in that case.

Court documents in her own writing paint a chilling picture of the terror that Pierre lived with. Many times, she wrote, her children, the youngest of whom was Polynice's daughter, witnessed the violence.

"He choked me and dragged me from the kitchen to the living [room] all while choking and all 3 of my kids were at home watching him," she wrote in an October 2010 request for an injunction. "After 2 years I finally have the courage to leave him and now he is threatening to kill me and take our daughter. I am very afraid."

"He told me that this time when he goes to prison, it's not going to be for domestic violence, it's going to be for murder because he will make sure that he kills me."